Should You Exercise On Thanksgiving?
Q: I need some advice here. Should you exercise on Thanksgiving? I’m going to do a lot of running away from the history behind the holiday but yeah, should I also do some actual running or other kind of physical activity?
A: If your normally scheduled workout falls on the day of Thanksgiving, then you can work out if you want to stick to your routine. And if you want to work out on Thanksgiving so you can have some alone time or so exercise can help improve your mood ahead of having to deal with family all fucking day, that’s another good reason to work out.
What’s not a good reason for going out of your way to do physical activity on Thanksgiving is if it’s for the sake of “earning your meal”, or using exercise to gain permission to partake in the indulgence of food, such as the Thanksgiving feast you’re going to eat later.
The idea of going to the gym on Thanksgiving morning then heading home to enjoy the deliciousness of Jennie-O Oven Ready Turkey Breast, Stove Top Stuffing, Kraft Mac & Cheese, Ocean Spray Cranberry Sauce, Hungry Jack Instant Mashed Potatoes, and Sara Lee Oven Fresh Pumpkin Pie seems like a good way to balance the scales. But the truth of the matter is that while working out ahead of time might help make room for a few extra calories in place of those that were burned during exercise, it’s not going to be anywhere close to being enough to completely cancel out a Thanksgiving meal. Even more, when you work out with the intent of earning your food, you’re more than likely going to push yourself hard so there’s less guilt or shame when you eat. While that increased intensity might help increase the amount of calories burned during exercise, it can have the effect of making you hungrier so you ultimately eat more than you ordinarily would’ve because your body is demanding energy to replenish itself. Also for consideration is the possibility that exercise might help rationalize eating more as a reward for your efforts.
Basically, if the only reason why you want to work out on Thanksgiving is to deserve the right to eat, then you probably shouldn’t because the endeavor is pretty pointless and can backfire. Instead, take the day off and eat as you like. As long as you’ve been active and mindful of your calorie intake the days prior and plan on getting back to doing so after the holiday, one meal or entire day of overeating won’t magically make you fat, just like how one meal or entire day of undereating won’t magically make you skinny.
That out of the way, here’s a brief overview of Thanksgiving so you can stop being willfully ignorant. The holiday isn’t that kumbaya bullshit that you were taught about the Pilgrims inviting Squanto and the “Indians” to a feast as a token of their appreciation for helping them survive their first winter in Plymouth. Instead, the truth is that while the Wampanoag did teach the Pilgrims how to grow crops, the Pilgrims didn’t intend for the celebration of their bountiful harvest to include them, as there’s nothing in the written record that they extended the Wampanoag an invitation to the feast. In all probability, they likely stumbled onto the event after hearing the sounds of celebratory gunshots and coming to investigate. Anyway, the three-day harvest festival was filled more with tension than friendship and goodwill because of the hostility of the Pilgrims almost as soon as the Mayflower landed, which ramped up to murder, theft, and oppression in the subsequent years after the “first” Thanksgiving, which itself was a tradition among Natives in the New World that preceded the arrival of Europeans.1Speaking of Europeans, the Wampanoag and other neighboring tribes had an almost century-long history of dealing with explorers, traders, and enslavers before the Pilgrims came.
Ahhhhhhhh, history!
Now, does anyone else have a fitness or nutrition question of their own that they want to ask?
Glossary: calories, exercise, fat, fitness, food, gym, intensity, nutrition, work out, workout
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